The Age of Whispered Conversations

By Rich Lowry

Monday, November 18, 2024

 

We live in an age of whispered conversations.

 

There are aspects of American life that everyone, or nearly everyone, knows are absurd but is too afraid to speak out against and feels powerless to reverse.

 

It used to be said that if someone looked over his shoulder, he was about to tell an insensitive joke. Now people are worried about being overheard making what should be commonsensical observations.

 

Below are the kinds of conversations that are happening all the time.

 

The maternity-ward nurse in a low voice: “Where the form says ‘birthing parent,’ that means mother. They just changed it. It’s crazy.”

 

The staffer in a medical office explaining that the ethnic boxes need to be checked on another form even though the categories make no sense and confiding, “Maybe I should have checked ‘Hispanic’ myself at some point — I think we had a relative from Spain somewhere along the line.”

 

The group of moms together at the local coffee shop, making sure that no one else can hear from a nearby table: “Did you see what happened in the high-school track competition? Why are guys competing against girls?”

 

The staffer at a bank to a friend he or she can completely trust near the water cooler when it is absolutely certain no one else is around: “That training was ridiculous and a waste of time.”

 

It’s a little like what it must have been like in, say, East Germany when no one believed in the system, but no one dared let on what they were really thinking.

 

This phenomenon surely had an influence on the outcome of the election.

 

As the Financial Times has documented, progressives have moved far left on social issues, leaving the average voter closer to the right than the left.

 

Properly understood, Donald Trump’s opposition to trans surgeries for inmates and illegal immigrants and to males playing in female sports aren’t right-wing positions. They’ve only become perceived as such because progressives have embraced ideas that would — from the perspective of a decade ago or so — have been considered unthinkable as a matter of universal assent.

 

When Republicans have raised objections to these ideas, they have been portrayed by the Democrats and the press as the “culture warriors” and extremists.

 

Most people don’t buy this construct, though. They know how wokeness has been pushed into their lives as a deliberate choice by authorities who don’t care what they think — or, worse, will punish them for thinking the wrong thing.

 

Surveys show that Americans are now afraid of speaking their minds, and for good reason. Hence, the whispered conversations.

 

Trump won for many reasons. Surely, though, one of them was that he was a rare opportunity to register an audible dissent from woke impositions.